Jazz Blues Quotes

We were either listening to jazz or Robert Johnson, the old blues man, but not to our peers.

Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.

Actually, my mother turned me on to the blues. We had Lightnin' Hopkins as well as Elvis Presley records.

There are no great jazz-fusion bands.

That's why I loved Dinah Washington. She sung jazz, but they called her the Queen of the Blues. She had the control and sophistication of jazz in her note selection and how to attack a song or certain lines, but then attacked it with a painful force of blues behind it. That's why I admired her so much, because of that versatility.

All music is the blues. All of it.

I like to listen to classical music... I like mainline jazz.

I really do love bluesy-jazzy music, so I love Etta James, B.B. King and Billie Holiday. I love that they have soul in their voices - I think that's something important is having.

Whenever I'm in Kansas City, I think back to all the jazz-blues greats who played the blues here - like Count Basie, Charlie Parker and Jay McShann. I watched those guys jam in different places and heard a lot of things - but I couldn't do what they did. They were too good.

As time passed on, got to hear some players who were straight up funky, not just jazz. Nat Adderley, for instance - he's a funky trumpet player, so he was my man.

When I discovered Mose Allison I felt I had discovered the missing link between jazz and blues